Editorial: January 2018

We’re back, feels like we’ve been gone forever!

This is a little later than usual, the paid job has been keeping me very busy from day one this year; January is our busiest month, which is always nice to endure straight after the Christmas break! Two more weeks to go…

As I mentioned in the Creative Christmas New Years Gaming Resolution post, I’ve put my entire backlog on howlongtobeat.com, with the intention of finally culling it a little bit. I’m going for quality over quantity, although there are some great experiences to be had which are just a few hours long.

After being abandoned in Destiny 2 on PC, I went back to the first game on Xbox One. Very quickly (to my surprise) I completed the main campaign and the first two DLCs they released for free, back in the day. Now I’ve just got The Taken King and Rise of Iron to finish. If they’re as quick as the rest, I’ll be left with a slightly bitter taste, Destiny as a whole, so far, has been quite underwhelming to me, despite the initial rush. It’s a beautiful looking game though.

December picks

• I was in awe of the truck driver who built a desk in his cab so he could continue to game on PC, some dedication right there…
• I finally got around to watching my first /Noclip documentary; Danny O’Dwyer, formerly of GameSpot, has been cranking out some awesome content over the last year and a bit. This one is an interesting tale of community around a GTA Online Crew, but this isn’t your average Crew…
• Following on from that, I read a great post over on gamingatheart.com about the Toxicity of Players, something I feel we’ve all observed over the last few years seemingly getting worse
• Researching for the Creative Christmas post regarding soundtracks, I stumbled across this excellent (old) article over on Polygon about my pick, the GTA V soundtrack
• More than a few giggles were had reading a post about getting into Minecraft “a bit late” over at The Dragons Tea Party
• A fun discussion was had over on AmbiGaming, about video game weapons
• Towards the end of December, /Noclip released a wonderful documentary about Horizon Zero Dawn, one of 2017’s most surprising hits. It’s a fascinating insight into the development of this game and I highly recommend it.

Heroes never die!

My growing fascination with Overwatch has continued, finally viewing each of the available character animated shorts, all of which were very enjoyable. I particularly enjoyed the whimsy of Bastion’s entry. That’s right I said whimsy!

Here’s a list of the ones Blizzard has made available so far, in case you’ve missed any of them.

I then found myself on YouTube watching the voice actors larking around, saying their lines from the game and ordering a Starbucks, among other things, while in character. At various points I think they start doing each others characters, just to make it extra confusing!

The Limited Edition Artbook has turned up, followed by the keyring, and The Overwatch Anthology just landed on my doorstep as I write this. There’s some free comics on Amazon… I’m losing too much sleep, I just can’t stop!

December hits

We spent most of December working on the Later Levels Creative Christmas collaboration, writing and managing our own contributions and reading posts from other sites. This was our first real effort at community involvement, we thoroughly enjoyed it! More than anything, it sparked many conversations within the team over WhatsApp and Discord, so we spent most of December talking about video games a little more than usual, as well as all playing together.

For the next few weeks we’ll be finishing up the stuff we dropped in December and getting started on those backlogs, catching up on missed reading and trying to get through January any way we can!